Yvonne Jila

Alumni portrait of Yvonne Jila, from the Master of Science in Social Studies of Gender. Interview was conducted in June 2024.

Hi Yvonne! What have you been up to since you graduated from the Master of Science in Social Studies of Gender?

I graduated in 2020 and I started my PhD in 2022. Soon after completing my studies, I continued working at Graduate School as a Pedagogic Support Mentor. This role required only a few hours per week with the student whom I was working with. During this period, I was also intentional about resting as I was exhausted from writing an emotionally draining thesis.

At the start of the year 2021, I started working for a charity organization as a field fundraiser. I would be out on the streets approaching people or knocking at people's doors looking for support for refugees and internally displaced persons. While the experience was in and of itself not easy as it came with challenges such as sometimes being outside in harsh weather and receiving unfriendly remarks from people, I also met a lot of friendly peple that I would not ordinarily meet on a normal day. This, combined with wonderful colleagues most of whom were students or had just completed their studies, gave me strength and above all, inspiration for my PhD topic on care. During this period, I also used the opportunity to study Swedish for Immigrants (SFI). Courses were online so I would attend morning classes then start my fundraising in the afternoon. My own experience of giving and receiving care helped me to shape my research proposal although I eventually decided to build on my master's thesis which was focusing on social movements. In May 2022, I was accepted for PhD at the department of Sociology after submitting my first and only PhD application. I then started my PhD in Lund at the end of August 2022, after working with the charity organization for 19 months. 

However, since 2022, I have been working at the department of Sociology with a research focus on women's movements and the politics of care. I am interested in finding out how activitists in increasingly repressive contexts define and practice care. Other than my research, I have also had the opportunity to teach bachelor's students from both Sociology and Psychology and the focus of my classes has so far been sociological theory.

Today, you are a PhD student at the department of Sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Lund University. How and why did you decide to pursue a PhD?

The idea of pursuing a PhD began sometime in 2015 after I had developed a Leadership Development Plan (LDP) which stated my career goal and the steps I needed to take in order to achieve the goal. In 2015, I qualified for a prestigious fellowship called the Mandela Washington Fellowship, the Young African Leader's Initiative. As part of the fellowship, I spent some time at the University of California - Berkeley, in California, and at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia. I developed my LDP in consultation with my mentors at both these institutions. My initial goal was to become a gender policy expert and in order to achieve this, I also needed to become a research expert. To become a research expert, I had listed a PhD as one of the steps I needed to reach my goal. I already had practical experience in the field of gender and women's human rights but I realized I needed theory and experience to realize my goal.

Fast-forward to 2018, during my master's in Social Studies of Gender, I started thinking about my epistemological standpoint and bringing voices of the marginalized to the fore. I became more and more interested in women's politics from below in the Global South, their resistance, resilience and agency. At this point, I became passionate about developing my voice and I wanted to contribute to the body of knowledge in this area. Now, I am pursuing a PhD focusing on women's movements and politics and care, and I see this as an opportunity to conduct original research and contribute to literature in the field of political Sociology and Gender.

How does a regular day as a PhD student look like for you?

This is a good question considering that when you are a PhD student, you are both a student and an employee. This means that there are tasks that are expected of me for each of these roles. So, as a student, I take up courses and focus on my own research, and as an employee, I teach. I would like to begin by stating that we can look at PhD like any other regular job 9-5 where the expectation is, say 8 hours per day. However, there is flexibility in terms of how you spend the hours, and it is possible to put in considerably longer hours for certain tasks and this may also depend on how busy the semester is.

On days when I am taking up courses only, I tend to center my day around attending classes, preparing for seminars and writing assignments. When writing assignments, we are strongly encouraged to have our research topics in mind so in a way it is like killing two birds with one stone. On one hand, you are doing the assignment to get credits but on the other hand, you are working on your research which is good. Research is an ongoing activity and as an individual, it is up to you to make time for it unlike courses and teaching, which are structured. However, I have regular meetings with my supervisors where I discuss and submit material related to my work. 

When I have teaching, I can spend days reading and preparing my material before delivering my lectures. When it is your first time to teach in a course, it is possible to spend a lot of time preparing the material but the good thing is that with most courses, you get to teach them again and I have seen that you spend less time when repeating the course you have taught before.

Back to the question, I would say my day varies on the tasks I have, and this requires a high degree of self-organization. Most of the tasks overlap, hence, I end up multi-tasking. In addition to what I have mentioned above, some days involve attending seminars at the department, or workshops and conferences within and outside of Lund.

What career advice would you give to current students at Graduate School?

Plan and have your goals. This may sound cliché but like every other area of life, it is important to reflect on where you are and where you want to see yourself in the next year, in the next five years and so on and the steps you need to get there. I see this as beneficial for both personal and professional development. Of course, things can go awry but having a plan is what keeps us motivated in the midst of challenges. Sometimes our plans may take time to materialize, sometimes we may need to reevaluate them, sometimes we may feel like failures, but my advice is to never give up and continue believing in yourself. I am motivated by the words of Nelson Mandela that, "it always seems impossible until it's done!"

I think there are a lot of opportunities and possibilities here that we can harness. In this regard, I would also like to encourage current students to be intentional about harnessing the resources they have. Resources can be in the form of time, skills, people (networks) starting with your colleagues, your lecturers, your supervisors, your course coordinators to social media platforms like LinkedIn. With regards networks, you can reach out to them for career advice, (job or other) opportunities. I reached out to my course coordinator, lecturers and supervisor during and after completing my studies concerning my future plans and they shared their tips and opportunities that came their way.

You can also use your time and skills to harness opportunities at the department and beyond. For example, why not apply to be a Supplemental Instruction Mentor at the department, or a summer job where you can gain an assortment of skills, among other things. Some experiences enhance our skills while others give us new knowledge or expand our horizons.

Having said all this, my emphasis to current students would be to set that goal, believe in yourself, and tap into your network. 

Lifelong learning is a topic for discussion in our society today. What advice do you have to students who are interested in embarking on a journey of lifelong learning?

Lifelong learning comes in different ways and in a way, I think we all do this even if at time when we may not really be aware of it. It is something that we need to harness as it has the potential of helping people become relevant in a world that is constantly changing and increasingly becoming competitive. We gain new skills and knowledge that can help us in adapting to changing job markets or help us in finding creative ways to address problems around us. For example, here in Sweden you can take up the language or courses outside the regular university program to expand your horizons and increase opportunities for the job market. I know of a friend at the Faculty of Social Sciences who had no background in Information Technology but after completing her studies at the faculty, she took short IT courses and is now working in a different field from what she initially studied. I believe with such qualifications, she has been able to build a unique skillset which has opened up opportunities that her traditional qualification alone may not have necessarily opened. While lifelong learning can be used to enhance chances of employability, we can also embark on it to address a skills gap and in other instances, we can use it to address the 'unemployment' gap in our curriculum vitaes.